Kazakh language

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Kazakh language

Kazakh (also Qazaq and variants, natively , , ; pronounced ) is a Turkic

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
language closely related to Nogai

Nogai language

Nogai , is a Turkic languages language spoken in southwestern Russia. Three distinct dialects are recognized: Qara-Nogay , spoken in Dagestan; Nogai Proper, in Stavropol; and Aqnogay , by the Kuban River, its tributaries in Karachay-Cherkessia, and in the Mineralnye Vody District....
and Karakalpak

Karakalpak language

Karakalpak is a Turkic language mainly spoken by Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan , as well as by Bashkirs and Nogay. Ethnic Karakalpaks who live in the Provinces of Uzbekistan tend to speak local Uzbek dialects....
.

Kazakh is an agglutinative language

Agglutinative language

An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphology point of view....
, and it employs vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
.

Kazakh language has its speakers (mainly Kazakhs

Kazakhs

The Kazakhs are a Turkic peoples of the northern parts of Central Asia ....
) spread over a vast territory from the Tian Shan mountains

Tian Shan

The Tian Shan , also commonly spelled Tien Shan, is a mountain range located in Central Asia. The Chinese name for Tian Shan or Tien Shan, may in turn go back to a Xiongnu name, qilian reported by the Shiji as the last place where they met and had their baby as in of the Yuezhi, which has been argued to refer to the Tian Shan...
to the Ural mountains

Ural Mountains

The Ural Mountains are a mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia. They are usually considered as the natural boundary between Europe and Asia....
. Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan, also Kazakstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a large Eurasian country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the List of countries by area as well as the world's largest landlocked country, it has a territory of 2,727,300 km? ....
, in which nearly 10 million speakers are reported to live (based on the CIA World Factbook's estimates for population and percentage of Kazakh speakers).

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Encyclopedia

Kazakh (also Qazaq and variants, natively , , ; pronounced ) is a Turkic

Turkic languages

Nogai language

Karakalpak language

Agglutinative language

Vowel harmony

Geographic distribution

The Kazakh language has its speakers (mainly Kazakhs

Kazakhs

The Kazakhs are a Turkic peoples of the northern parts of Central Asia ....
) spread over a vast territory from the Tian Shan mountains

Tian Shan

Ural Mountains

Kazakhstan

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The 2002 Russian Census

Russian Census (2002)

Russian Census of 2002 was the first census of the Russian Federation carried out on October 9 through October 16, 2002. It was carried out by the Goskomstat ....
reported 560,000 Kazakh speakers in Russia. Other sizable populations of Kazakh speakers live in Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia and Central Asia. It borders Russia to the north and People's Republic of China to the south, east and west....
(fewer than 200,000). Large numbers exist elsewhere in Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
(mostly in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a Landlocked_country#Doubly_landlocked_country country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union....
) and the former Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
, and in Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country that is located approximately in the center of Asia....
, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
and other countries. There are also some Kazakh speakers in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
who immigrated from Turkey in the 1970s.

Writing system

Today, Kazakh is written in the Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, while the more than one million Kazakh-speakers in China use an Arabic

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
-derived script similar to that used to write Uyghur

Uyghur language

Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by People's Republic of China....
.

The oldest known written records of languages closely related to Kazakh were written in the Orkhon script

Orkhon script

The Old Turkic script is the alphabet used by the G?kt?rk and other early Turkic groups from at least the 8th century to record the Old Turkic language....
. However, it is not believed that any of these varieties were direct predecessors of Kazakh. Modern Kazakh has historically been written using versions of the Latin

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
, Cyrillic

Cyrillic alphabet

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
scripts.

In October 2006, Nursultan Nazarbayev

Nursultan Nazarbayev

Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev has served as the President of Kazakhstan since the Fall of the Soviet Union and the nation's independence in 1991....
, the President

President

President is a title held by many leaders of organizations, company, trade unions, university, and country. Etymology, a "president" is one who Wiktionary:Preside, who sits in leadership ....
of Kazakhstan, brought up the topic of using the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet as the official script for Kazakh in Kazakhstan. A Kazakh government study released in September 2007 said that Kazakhstan could feasibly switch to a Latin script over a 10 to 12 year period, for a cost of $300 million. However on December 13, 2007, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev offered not to advance the transformation of the Kazakh alphabet from the Cyrillic to Latin one, as he noted “For 70 years the Kazakhstanis read and wrote in Cyrillic. More than 100 nationalities live in our state. Thus we need stability and peace. We should be in no hurry in the issue of alphabet transformation”.

Phonology

Kazakh exhibits front-back vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
, with some words of recent foreign origin (usually of Russian

Russian language

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe....
or Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
origin) as exceptions. There is also a system of rounding harmony which resembles that of Kyrgyz, but which does not apply as strongly and is not reflected in the orthography.

Consonants

The following chart depicts the consonant inventory of standard Kazakh; many of the sounds, however, are allophones of other sounds or appear only in recent loan-words. The 18 consonant phonemes listed by Vajda are in bold—since these are phonemes, their listed place and manner of articulation are very general, and will vary from what is shown. The borrowed phonemes , , , and , only occur in recent mostly Russian borrowings, and are shown in parentheses in the table below.

In the table, the elements left of a divide are voiceless, while those to the right are voiced.

caption | Kazakh consonant phonemes
	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...		Labio- dental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants Place of articulation with the lower lip and the upper teeth. The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...		Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages.... / Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....		Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate ....		Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....		Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....		Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants....		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
Plosive
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....
Tap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another....
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....

Vowels

Kazakh has a system of nine phonemic vowels, which are shown in the table below. Three of these are phonetically diphthongs; however, Vajda argues that this has no phonemic bearing, and that they are in fact not phonemically composed of the elements which make them up, but are instead one phonemic element. The rounding contrast and generally only occur as phonemes in the first syllable of a word, but do occur later allophonically; see the section on harmony below for more information.

Kazakh vowel phonemes
	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel....	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel....
Open Open vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth....

Kazakh also has three diphthongs: , , and , corresponding to orthographic ?, ?, and ?.

Morphology and Syntax

Kazakh is generally verb-final, though various permutations on SOV word order can be used. Verbal and nominal morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
in Kazakh exists almost exclusively in the form of agglutinative suffixes.

Case

Kazakh has 7 cases. Case endings are applied only to the last element of a noun phrase—e.g., a noun, an adject, or a nominalised verb phrase. The endings outlined in the chart below are applied to a word ending in a front vowel, a word ending in a back vowel, a word ending in each of those with a voiced consonant, and a word ending with each of this and an unvoiced consonant. Note that the suffixes for the instrumental case do not follow vowel harmony—the vowel is a front vowel regardless of the other vowels in the word.

Declension of nouns
Case	Morpheme	Possible forms	???? "ship"	??? "air"	????? "bucket"	????? "carrot"	??? "head"	??? "salt"
Nom	—	—	????	???	?????	?????	???	???
Acc	-NI
??????	?????	???????	???????	?????	?????
Gen	-NI?
???????	??????	????????	????????	??????	??????
Dat	-GA
??????	?????	???????	???????	?????	?????
Loc	-DA
??????	?????	???????	???????	?????	?????
Abl	-DAn
???????	??????	????????	????????	??????	??????
Inst	-Men
???????	??????	????????	????????	??????	??????

Pronouns

Kazakh has eight personal pronouns:

Personal pronouns
Singular		Plural
Kazakh (transliteration)	English	Kazakh (transliteration)	English
??? (Men)	I	??? (Biz)	We
??? (Sen)	You (singular informal)	?????? (Sender)	You (plural informal)
??? (Siz)	You (singular formal)	?????? (Sizder)	You (plural formal)
?? (Ol)	He/She/It	???? (Olar)	They

The declension of the pronouns is outlined in the following chart. Singular pronouns (with the exception of ???, which used to be plural) exhibit irregularities, while plural pronouns don't. Irregular forms are highlighted in bold.

Declension of pronouns
Nom	???	???	???	??	???	??????	??????	????
Acc	????	????	?????	???	?????	????????	????????	??????
Gen	?????	?????	??????	????	??????	?????????	?????????	???????
Dat	?????	?????	?????	????	?????	????????	????????	??????
Loc	?????	?????	?????	????	?????	????????	????????	??????
Abl	?????	?????	??????	????	??????	?????????	?????????	???????
Inst	???????	???????	??????	??????	??????	?????????	?????????	???????

In addition to the pronouns, there are several more sets of morphemes dealing with person.

Morphemes indicating person
	pronouns	copulas	possessive endings	past/conditional
1st sg	???
2nd sg	???
2nd formal sg	???
3rd sg	??	—
—
1st pl	???
2nd pl	??????
2nd formal pl	??????
3rd pl	????	—
—

Tense/Aspect/Mood

Kazakh may express different combinations of tense

Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
, aspect

Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
, and mood

Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
through the use of various verbal morphology or through a system of auxiliary verbs, many of which might better be considered light verbs. For example, the (imperfect) present tense in Kazakh bears different aspectual information depending on whether basic present-tense morphology is used, or one of (commonly) four verbs is used:

Aspect in the Present Tense in Kazakh
Kazakh	aspect	English translation
??????	non-progressive	"I eat."
??? ????????	progressive	"I am eating [right now]."
??? ???????	progressive/durative	"I am [sitting and] eating." / "I have been eating."
??? ??????	progressive/punctual	"I am [in the middle of] eating [this very minute]."
??? ??????	habitual/frequentative	"I eat [e.g., lunch at home every day]."

Evidentiality

Kazakh exhibits an evidentiality

Evidentiality

In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement, that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists....
system which does not neatly align with morphological paradigms.

??????? ???????? - he cleaned it and I saw the result
??????? ???????? - he cleaned it, I saw the result and verified it with him
??????? ???????? ???? - he cleaned it and told me, but I probably didn't see the results
??????? ??????? - he cleaned it and I saw him clean it
??????? ???????? ????? - he cleaned it, or so I infer from a result I saw which suggests this
??????? ???????? ????? - he cleaned it, or so I infer from a result I saw which suggests this

External links

(M.A. thesis, University of North Dakota
University of North Dakota

The University of North Dakota is a public university in Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States. Established by the Dakota Territory Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the U.S....
, 2003)

Kazakh language

Geographic distribution

Writing system

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Morphology and Syntax

Case

Pronouns

Tense/Aspect/Mood

Evidentiality

See also

External links